Blood Lines

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  God, this was a hellish place! Slider was beginning to feel sick, though whether from fatigue or the smell he was not sure. He had no doubt now that he had found his man; in his mind he compared this dismal, grim den and the normality of Mills’s rooms. If ever there was an example of nurture versus nature, this was it. Gilbert was obviously an abnormal and possibly dangerous man, and coming home to these surroundings night after night would be like marinading meat to increase the flavour. Slider wondered how he managed to keep up a normal life outside at all, which he must do if he gave advice at the centre, unless his customers were even further spaced out than him.

  Slider knew he must get out of here to wait in a safer and pleasanter place for reinforcements and the return of the householder; but he had one more small hunch to play. He crossed to the table and flicked through the London telephone directories. Yes, it was as he thought: both Jimenez and Jepp were listed. Not only that, but, joy of joys, their addresses had been marked with highlighter. Gotcha, you bastard, Slider thought. And Greatrex was not listed, nor was Lassiter, nor Lupton; rifling his memory Slider came up with the name of one other singer, Connie Malcolm, and the producer Ben Edgerton, and they were not listed either. The answer, then, to why those particular people had been chosen was one of simple access. How the campaign would have progressed he could guess from some of the things lying on the desk – the Musician’s Union directory, a list of what seemed to be agents’ addresses and telephone numbers, and a copy of the programme from Glyndebourne for Don Giovanni, carefully dissected, with the cast list and the stars’ profiles laid out separately. He had meant to get them all, given time and reasonable luck.

  The thing now was to get a search warrant. There was plenty of stuff here that he could see, and probably more that he couldn’t, maybe even bloodstained clothing – for Gilbert must be believing himself quite safe, knowing that Mills was under suspicion and that Mills had no idea he had a twin. Presumably that’s why he had killed Miss Giles, because she was the only one who was likely to give away the secret to Slider. He felt miserably guilty for her death. The thing now was to get the evidence before Gilbert had a chance to destroy it.

  Slider left the room, closing the door carefully behind him, and retraced his steps, feeling an enormous weight of oppression lift as he breathed the comparatively fresh air outside. He walked back down the side of the house, reaching for his mobile to ring Atherton and find out where the hell he was, why he wasn’t here yet. He had to stop for a moment still short of the side gate to disentangle the clip from the torn edge of his trouser pocket (would Joanna mend that if asked, or would that be tactless?) thinking that it was odd that there had been no religious stuff in the house, nothing except that cross in the front room, which given that he—

  The smell of sweat – sharp, rank as nettles in a ditch but much less reassuring – warned him an instant before the single footfall he actually heard. He swung round, his hand holding the mobile going up instinctively as though to defend himself, to see a man wearing Mills’s face but certainly not Mills’s expression, holding a piece of lead piping – how traditional! – in a surgically-gloved hand – how odd! – but not just holding it, swinging it. Too late to dodge. Slider heard the smack of the blow, felt the sickening thud of it at a level that was beyond or at least outside pain, felt his stomach rise up nauseously, and saw a brief confusion of ground coming up to meet him and old-fashioned black plimsoles (quiet) (another pair?) before he fell through the ground and surprisingly and completely out of the world altogether.

  He came to himself to the awareness of a headache – mother, father and both grandparents of a headache which precluded any other sort of thinking just at first. It was a smashing, sickening sort of pain; as he adjusted to it, other, lesser pains faded in, a deep ache in his neck and shoulders, a stinging, raw pain in his cheek, sharp bands of it round his arms and legs. He had no idea what had happened to him, and was aware that the first priority was to open his eyes, but this he was deeply reluctant to do, from a sharp certainty that it would hurt, and from a duller suspicion that he would not like what he saw.

  It was at that point that someone grabbed his hair at the back of his skull and dragged his head up. It seemed an unkind thing to do. Simultaneously he smelled rank, horrible sweat and surprisingly the sweet perfume of wood shavings. A voice above him said, ‘You’re awake. Come on, stop pretending.’

  Memory flooded back, his muscles tensed to leap for escape, and he realised he was tied up and couldn’t move. Now he opened his eyes. He was inside the garden shed, which accounted for the smell of wood, and he inwardly cursed himself for not having thought of looking in the shed which was so anomalously new and smart. Now he was in deep, deep shit.

  The sweat factory released his hair and came round from behind him to sit on a wooden stool between him and the door. The man with Mills’s face (yes, there was the mole on the wrong side) wore his hair without a parting, brushed straight back, but otherwise looked startlingly like Mills, in general size and shape as well as features. He was wearing a khaki short-sleeved shirt with large dark rings under the armpits and down the middle, tucked into khaki shorts, and his thick muscular legs (there was a very fine red mark on one thigh, the last trace of a healed cut) bulged out from below them to disappear into olive green socks and the black plimsoles. These things Slider was sure Mills would never wear. The other really serious difference from Mills was that this man was holding in his right hand a large and glittering combat knife.

  The true depth of the trouble he was in caught up with Slider’s dazed mind and for a moment pushed the headache into the background. He was sitting in a very heavy wooden chair, like a one-seater garden bench except that there seemed to be a hole cut out of the seat, commode-style, the edges of which were cutting into his buttocks and upper thighs. The size and squareness of the chair made it very stable. His ankles were tied to the front legs, his arms behind the seat back, and there was a cord round his thighs and the chair seat, all of which accounted for the bands of pain he had registered. The cords were tight and a covert wriggle convinced him that the knots were good.

  As though he heard the thought, Gilbert smiled. ‘Don’t waste your energy, I know how to tie a rope. They used to teach you knots in the Scouts, you know. Not any more. It’s all environmental awareness and cultural sensitivity.’

  Slider said nothing. The shorts, the knife and the smile added up to bad, bad news; he was frantically searching the situation for some escape, but the headache made it hard to think. Gilbert had hit him on the temple, possibly fractured his skull. He could feel the stickiness of blood on his left cheek where presumably it had trickled down. His right cheek was also painful, stingingly so, and after a second he realised he must have been dragged to the shed, scraping his face on the ground. That also accounted for the pain in his shoulders and neck.

  Gilbert must have been in here, in the shed, all the time – that was why the back door was unlocked – saw Slider come out and crept up on him. What had he been doing in here? Slider now realised that the shed contained some odd things. Under the window, to his left as he sat facing the door, was a wooden workbench, on which was an old manual typewriter, some Letraset sheets and a stack of white cards printed with a cross at the top, a very large Bible and various other religious books – one a luridly coloured children’s picture storybook called Bible Stories for Children. There were various woodworking tools, and a set of brass weights of the sort used with old-fashioned kitchen scales; the largest, the 2lb weight, had a thin piece of cord knotted through its ring with a thick elastic band on the other end. There was also a set of powder-paints ready mixed up in jars, and another jar full of brushes. On the wall to either side of the window could be seen the fruits of the brushes, a series of paintings pinned up, of simple, highly coloured Bible scenes, presumably copied from the children’s book. Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, Moses and the Burning Bush, Absalom caught up in the thicket. How innocent and sweet, except that the
y had been painted by a man of thirty-eight.

  On the blank wall to his right was a less beguiling collection, of ropes and cords of different thicknesses, textures and materials, all carefully rolled up and tied, and hung from nails. The ropes were interspersed with various ceremonial knives and swords, many of them with decorative sheaths, and the whole was arranged in a pattern, as sometimes old shields and battle-axes are hung up in stately homes.

  And there were crosses everywhere – wood, plastic, raffia, metal, ivory – all different sizes, probably a dozen of them at least, with the largest on the back of the door straight ahead. What had Gilbert been doing in here? Not painting – nothing was wet. Reading? Praying?

  ‘So, what were you doing here,’ Gilbert asked suddenly, ‘snooping around my house? Up to no good, that’s obvious, or you’d have called at the front door like an honest man.’

  ‘I did call at the front door,’ Slider said – his voice came out in a croak and he had to adjust it. ‘I rang and knocked but there was no answer.’

  ‘So you came round the back.’ Gilbert was not looking at him. He was looking at the knife which he was turning back and forth softly against his bare thigh, almost as if he was stropping it.

  ‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘To knock at the back door.’

  ‘To ask the time? Or did you want a drink of water?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to Mr Gilbert. Is that you?’

  ‘And what did you want to see me about?’ Gilbert cooed, smiling.

  Slider was watching the knife. That dreamy, preparatory movement terrified him. In his imagination it had already flashed out to open a slit in him. If he said the wrong thing – but what was the right thing the say to a five-star nutter? I’m sorry, Mr Gilbert, I’m not very good at pain. Can we skip this bit? This isn’t what I joined the police for. ‘I heard you were an expert on opera,’ he heard himself say, and immediately regretted it as he saw Gilbert begin to move. Oh shit, oh shit—

  But Gilbert stood up and laid the knife down on the workbench. Slider’s relief was so intense he’d have slumped if the ropes allowed. ‘Opera?’ Gilbert said. ‘You’re fond of opera, are you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know much about it, but I’d like to learn,’ Slider said, trying to sound conversational.

  ‘Would you like to hear some?’ said Gilbert, crossing behind him. ‘I’ve got just about everything here. Oh, of course, I beg your pardon, you can’t see, can you? I’ve a very nice sound system, and everything on CD.’ Slider heard various small sounds and clicks interspersed with Gilbert’s breathing which he could easily follow in his mind’s eye as a CD was selected and put into the machine. In a moment a chorus roared out from speakers just behind him, and was immediately turned down, though not by much. It was still loud, and Slider recognised it without welcome as a bit of Don Giovanni.

  ‘I come out here to listen because I can have it on as loud as I like without the neighbours complaining,’ Gilbert said, still behind him. His mouth approached Slider’s ear as at the same time his arm came out past Slider and picked up the knife again. ‘It will also do nicely to cover any noises you might make,’ he said, warm, wet and close. He put an arm round Slider’s neck and laid the blade delicately against his throat. ‘And now suppose you stop playing silly games and tell me what you really came here for, Detective Inspector Slider. I’ve been through your pockets, you see. I know who you are.’

  Slider felt the tickle of the cold metal on his skin, and had a vivid image of exactly what the inside of his neck would look like. He had seen the inside of Roger Greatrex’s and Elizabeth Giles’s recently enough to remember. ‘If you know who I am, you must know what I’m here for,’ Slider said. Oddly enough, though, it wasn’t so bad now as when he could see the knife at a distance. At least now he knew where it was aiming. Maybe throat-cutting wasn’t too painful. Freddie said death was almost instantaneous when done by an expert. And this man was good.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Gilbert. ‘I want to know how much you know.’

  ‘I know everything,’ Slider said, ‘so if anything happens to me, someone else will come after me, and someone else. You’ll never get away. So it won’t do you any good to kill me.’

  ‘It won’t do you much good, either,’ Gilbert said logically. Out of sight, he even sounded quite a bit like Mills. ‘So if you know everything, why are you here alone, snooping around?’

  ‘I’m only the scouting party,’ Slider said. ‘The others are on their way.’ Atherton! he thought suddenly. Praise be, of course someone was on the way, and would be here any minute. Why the hell wasn’t he here already? ‘The others will be arriving any time now,’ he went on, and something in the changed tone of his voice must have carried conviction because the knife was removed from his throat and Gilbert came back round, first to look out of the window, and then to sit down again facing Slider and looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Gilbert said at last. He began that evil stroking of the blade again. ‘Tell me what you know, and then I’ll decide what to do to you.’

  Slider didn’t like that preposition. With you would have been kinder. He decided to be bold. ‘I know about the three people you killed and the one you didn’t manage to, and I know why you did it.’ Gilbert watched him quizzically. ‘You were shocked and outraged by the blasphemy you witnessed – and by society’s calm acceptance of it. Why, Roger Greatrex even praised it! He was symptomatic of the whole sickness of the modern world – slick, clever, evil. And his private life was as bad as his professional one – everyone knew what sort of a man he was. That’s why you decided to start with him.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gilbert said. He sounded pleasantly interested, and the knife now lay still on his knee. Everyone likes hearing about themselves, Slider thought. If he could keep the talking going until Atherton got here—

  ‘The difficulty was getting near him. You didn’t even know where he lived. Then you saw in the paper that he was going to be on the television programme, Questions of Our Time, which goes out live from White City. You went along there on the evening and picked out somebody scruffy-looking at the back of the queue who’d be glad to give you his ticket for twenty pounds. Once inside, it was easy enough to slip away from the rest – it’s always chaotic in there.’

  ‘My, you do know everything, don’t you?’ Gilbert said ironically, but he didn’t seem angry, only fascinated.

  Slider went on, trying to sound conversational. ‘The one thing I don’t know is how you managed to find Roger Greatrex – or was that just luck?’

  ‘Not entirely. I’d been to that programme before – when they had religious or ethical questions – so I knew the routine. And I went on a guided tour of the centre years ago with my school, so I knew the layout. The difficulty was going to be getting him on his own. I hid on the staircase and watched the greenroom through the glass. I couldn’t believe my luck when he came out alone. But then he went into another room.’

  The knife was now being tapped briskly against the kneecap. Slider swore if he got out of this alive no-one over whom he had any influence would ever wear shorts again.

  ‘I went to the door,’ Gilbert said, ‘and listened. I thought if he was on his own—’ He stopped.

  ‘But he wasn’t. He was with a woman,’ Slider said.

  Gilbert glared. ‘I heard them – the filthy animals! I heard him slaking his filthy lust – just wherever it took him, like a dog. Oh, I knew then I was right to kill him. He came out at last and went into the men’s room. I was going to follow when the female came out and I had to dodge back. I thought about putting her down, too, but I wanted Greatrex. She could wait. When she’d gone I went into the men’s and there he was. Do you know what the filthy creature was doing?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do,’ Slider said. ‘He was washing himself.’

  ‘As if water alone could cleanse him of that!’ Gilbert paused a moment and looked at Slider thoughtfully. ‘Are you a Christian?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sl
ider said, grateful he could say it with some conviction.

  ‘Churchgoer?’

  ‘When I can. When I’m not working.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let work interfere with your duty to God,’ Gilbert said sternly. ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘Go on about Greatrex,’ Slider said weakly. He licked his lips and tasted blood. His head was bleeding again. ‘When you found him in the men’s room—?’

  ‘I went up behind him, held him, read him his sentence. Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 24. “When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, shall he live? In his trespass that he hath trespassed and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.” He didn’t struggle. Unlike the dumb beast, he knew what was coming to him, and he knew what for. I saw the understanding in his eyes as I looked at them in the mirror. Then I put the card into his pocket, caught him by the chin, and cut.’

  Slider had never known there could be so much emotion in such a small word. It was a sharp-edged, lip-smacking, blood-filled word. The music behind him boomed, sounding distorted, he felt very sick and there were specks before his eyes. Concussion, he thought. He struggled to keep hold of his consciousness.

  ‘Afterwards,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you did afterwards.’

  ‘I thought you knew everything,’ Gilbert said, sharply suspicious.

  ‘You went up in the lift – to the canteen – mix with the others,’ Slider said with difficulty. ‘Hid – hid the bag – on the roof of the lift.’

  Gilbert relaxed. ‘I was sorry to part with that raincoat, but the blood would never have come out.’